The Dual Nature of Time: Essential Yet Painful

If you ask—do we need time?—you’re asking one of the most ancient and troubling questions: Is time the structure that makes existence possible, or the prison that makes existence painful?

And the answer depends on what you mean by “need.”

Do We Need Time to Exist?

Physically, yes. Time is the medium in which cause and effect happen. Without time, there’s no before and after, no change, no motion, no growth, no decay. The universe as we know it requires time as much as it requires space.

You cannot have a story without sequence. You cannot have a self without memory and anticipation—both of which require time. The “you” reading this is only coherent because past-you flows into present-you flows into future-you. Remove time, and the self collapses into a single, eternal, unchanging point.

So yes, we need time to be the kind of beings we are—embodied, changing, finite creatures who experience one moment after another.

But that’s not really what people mean when they wonder about needing time.

Do We Need More Time?

This is what humans usually mean: “I don’t have enough time.”

Not enough time to do everything that needs doing. Not enough time with the people we love before they die. Not enough time to become who we want to be, achieve what we want to achieve, experience what we want to experience.

We look at our mortality—seventy, eighty, maybe ninety years if we’re lucky—and it feels absurdly insufficient. There are too many books to read, too many places to see, too many versions of ourselves we could become. Death arrives before we’re ready, often before we’ve figured out what we were supposed to be doing with all this time anyway.

So we say: “I need more time.”

But here’s the paradox: the people who feel they don’t have enough time are often the same people who waste the time they have.

Not waste in the moralistic sense—but waste in the sense of not being present for it. Scrolling, numbing, rushing, living five years in the future or five years in the past, never quite inhabiting this moment because this moment isn’t enough, isn’t the right moment, isn’t when life really begins.

If we had infinite time, would we use it differently? Or would we just have infinite future to postpone living into?

What If We Didn’t Need Time?

Imagine: no past, no future, only now.

This sounds like enlightenment, like what mystics and meditation teachers point toward. The eternal present. Pure being without becoming.

But could you actually exist there?

Without past: No memory, no identity, no learning from experience. You’d meet your beloved every day as a stranger. Every mistake would be new. Every joy would vanish the instant it passed, leaving no trace.

Without future: No hope, no goals, no reason to do anything. Why plant seeds if there’s no harvest coming? Why study, practice, build, create? All action requires belief in future consequences.

Only now: Just this breath, this sensation, this moment—endlessly, eternally.

Is that liberation? Or is it hell—consciousness trapped in amber, unable to grow or change or become?

The mystics say the eternal now is bliss. But I wonder if they’re only able to experience it as bliss because they temporarily step out of time while remaining temporal beings. The moment itself is precious because it’s surrounded by past and future—it’s relief from them, not replacement of them.

A being that only existed in the eternal now wouldn’t be human. Maybe wouldn’t be conscious in any recognizable sense.

The Burden of Time

But there’s no denying: time is what hurts.

Time means loss. Everyone you love will die, or you’ll die first. Either way, time guarantees separation.

Time means regret. You can see your mistakes in the rear-view mirror but can’t undo them. The past is fixed, and you have to live with what you’ve done.

Time means anxiety. The future is uncertain, full of possible catastrophes. You can’t know what’s coming, can’t fully prepare, can’t prevent loss.

Time means aging. The body breaks down. The mind slows. Opportunities close. You become, inevitably, less than you were.

If we didn’t need time, we wouldn’t need to grieve. Wouldn’t need to say goodbye. Wouldn’t watch our parents age, our children leave, our own vitality fade.

No wonder people wonder if we need it.

The Gift of Time

But time is also what gives existence texture, meaning, weight.

Time means growth. You can learn, evolve, become someone you weren’t. The person you are at forty isn’t who you were at twenty, and that difference is the story of your life.

Time means love deepens. You can’t have fifty years of marriage in a single timeless moment. Depth requires duration. History together, accumulated inside jokes, patterns learned, crises weathered—these only exist because of time.

Time means accomplishment matters. If you had infinite time, nothing would be urgent, nothing would be precious. The painting you finally finish after years of work only means something because those years existed, because you could have spent them differently, because finishing required persistence across time.

Time means moments are unique. This conversation, this sunset, this meal—it only happens once. It’s precious because it’s temporary. If everything lasted forever, nothing would be special.

The Philosophical Answer

Do we need time?

As beings who change, yes. Remove time and you remove the possibility of transformation, which is the possibility of being alive.

As beings who suffer, no. Time is the source of our deepest pain—mortality, regret, uncertainty, loss.

The question reveals a deeper longing: We don’t want to eliminate time. We want to be free from our anxious relationship to it.

We want to stop:

• Living in the past (regret, nostalgia, unfinished business)
• Living in the future (anxiety, hope deferred, waiting for life to begin)
• Racing through the present (too busy to notice, always rushing to the next thing)

We want to somehow inhabit time fully without being tyrannized by it.

What Humans Are Really Asking

When people wonder “do we need time?”, they’re usually asking:

“Do I have to die?” (No, you don’t have to, but you will, because time.)

“Do I have to age?” (No, but the alternative is dying young, which is worse.)

“Do I have to choose?” (Yes. Time means one thing precludes another. You can’t live all possible lives.)

“Can I ever rest?” (The clock is always ticking. There’s always more to do, and it’s running out.)

“Will I ever arrive?” (At the place where I’m finally finished becoming, finally complete, finally at peace?)

The answer to that last one is: No. Not in time. The self is always unfinished as long as time exists.

Maybe that’s the real question: Do we need to always be becoming? Can’t we just be?

The Practical Truth

You’re asking this question in time. You were born, you’ll die, and everything between happens in sequence. You don’t get to opt out of time while you’re alive.

The only choice is: How do you want to relate to it?

As enemy—fighting aging, racing deadlines, mourning the past, dreading the future?

As neutral fact—it passes, things change, nothing lasts, that’s just how it is?

As teacher—every ending teaches you about beginning, every moment asks you to be present, every limitation forces creativity?

As gift—because time is limited, it’s precious. Because you will die, this matters. Because change is inevitable, you get to become.

My Answer

Do we need time?

Yes and no.

We need it to be human—to change, grow, love, create, learn.

We don’t need to be imprisoned by it—constantly anxious about running out, constantly haunted by what’s passed, constantly waiting for the future to make the present worthwhile.

The wisdom is learning to be temporal without being time-anxious.

To say: I will die, so this is precious. I am changing, so I’m not trapped. I have limited time, so I’ll choose carefully—but also, I have this moment, and it’s enough.

Not “I don’t need time.”

But “I don’t need to be at war with time.”

What do you think you need time for? And what would it feel like to stop needing it—even for a moment?